News: Wax Trax co-founder Dannie Flesher dead at 58

Dannie Flesher, left, and Jim Nash founded Wax Trax Records in Denver in 1974 before moving to Chicago, where they created another music store and, most notably, a music label under the same name. Flesher passed away on Sunday. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.

Dannie Flesher, who opened Wax Trax Records in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in 1974, died last week in his Arkansas hometown. He was 58.

Best known for the Chicago-based Wax Trax label he created with his life partner and business partner Jim Nash – home to Ministry, Front 242, KMFDM and other industrial rock pioneers – Flesher got his start in music in Denver.

“Dannie was quiet, a very nice person,” Wax Trax Records co-owner Dave Stidman said earlier today. “But Jim, his life partner and his partner in the store, was more of the music and record person.”
When Flesher and Nash realized that their niche required a larger population base, they sold the legendary Denver location to Stidman and Duane Davis, who still own the spot at 638 E. 13th Ave. Then they moved to Chicago, where they opened up another store under the same name and began work on the label.

“They’re locked into the Wax Trax label industrial/disco image,” Davis said earlier today from the Wax Trax vinyle store, “but what I remember about those guys is them knowing everything about all kinds of music. Jim was originally from Kansas City, Missouri, and Danny was from Hope, Arkansas, but they both came from old rock ’n’ roll/blues/r&b backgrounds.”

Davis remembers the year he and Stidman first talked about purchasing Wax Trax from Flesher and Nash.

“Dave and I were both social workers in Jefferson County at the time,” Davis said, “but Dave had made the circuit of all the record stores in Denver, and he’d gotten to know Dannie and Jim pretty well. They were getting ready to move to Chicago – they said the stuff they were into, all that punk, post-punk and industrial music, needed a larger population to draw from, and Chicago was the place.

“And in November of 1978, Dave and I had put an offer on the store and that was that.”

Davis went to Wax Trax original Chicago outpost once, and he said it was “sharp as a tack” and “a model of what an independent store and label wants to be.

“They did some filming for ‘Pretty in Pink’ down there at the Chicago store, and I think John Belushi used to hang out there,” Davis continued. “It was a real sparkplug and a center of an exciting indie city and scene.”

And while the Wax Trax stores – in Denver, Boulder and Chicago – and the label have employed countless music geeks throughout the last three decades, Flesher and Nash are remembered as being the heart of the brand, the guys that started it all.

“Dannie was a very casual, very quiet guy,” Davis said. “He took a backseat while Jim motormouthed right over everything. That said, they were both integrally involved in the biz.”

The Wax Trax label was purchased by TVT Records in 1992 after Nash and Flesher filed for bankruptcy. Nash died in 1995. Flesher died of pneumonia on Jan. 10 in Hope, Ark.